Sunday, February 5, 2012

Endangered Wolf Center Reacts to Movie

Eureka's Endangered Wolf Center caught attention in St. Louis with both a
plea and an announcement this weekend. The center's director of animal
care said wolves view humans as predators, not prey.

By
Julie Brown Patton

January 31, 2012

This weekend's national movie launch of the fictional, suspense film The Grey sent shivers down the backs of staffers and volunteers at the Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka because they feared that once again wolves were associated with an unearned negative reputation.

The movie pits stranded airplane crash survivors against a pack of wild wolves in Alaskan wilderness, according to the movie's trailer and recap.
Liam Neeson's job in the movie prior to the crash is to "protect men
from dangers they cannot see." The movie's gist is about the question of
how hard people would fight to survive, but in this case, it's a wolf
pack that emerges as the major threat to these humans.
The center's staff who care for wolves and endangered species hopes
everyone realizes the drama created in the movie is not based on
reality, but purely offered for entertainment value.

But Pam Braasch, education director at the local wolf center, said
wolves by nature are much more shy creatures and would not likely seek
contact with humans—unlike what was portrayed in this movie.
Braasch told KSDK-TV's Art Holliday in an interview that movie-goers should not believe everything they hear about wolves.
Regina Mossotti, director of animal care and conservation at the center, told Patch
the movie is a fictional, unrealistic portrayal of wolf behavior and
is completely inaccurate. Unlike the wolves depicted in the movie,
wild wolves are extremely elusive and very cautious by nature, she
said.

"Biologically, this movie doesn't make any sense. In real life,
wolves would not put forth that much energy to hunt humans because their
bodies would not be compensated for such an effort," said Mossotti.
"Wolves in Alaska focus their energy on caribou and moose, perhaps
rabbits and rodents. They wouldn't even spend hours on catching a
rabbit."
She said she's personally encountered wolves while hiking. "It was a
large pack, and they would have nothing to do with me. There were only
two of us hiking, but they turned and ran away. We are not their prey.
They view us as predators."

A wolf’s natural instinct is to fear and avoid humans, said
Mossotti. In fact, there has never been a documented case in North
America of a healthy, non-habituated wild wolf attacking a human, she
stated. "According to the Alaska Fish and Wildlife Service (2002) and
High Country News (2006) there have only been a handful of recorded
human-wolf interactions in recorded history in North America, and they
were from wolves that were sick, had been someone’s 'pet' (lost that
natural fear of humans) or were dog-wolf/coyote hybrids."
Mossotti said human habituation of a wolf can interfere with that
natural shyness—if humans try to feed wolves, then the animals lose
that natural fear.

"The movie The Grey is a perfect example of how a myth,
designed for entertainment, can become woven into the fabric of our
culture—through stories, fairytales and now movies, it can negatively
change our perspective toward wildlife," Mossotti said.
"From Little Red Riding Hood, Three Little Pigs and werewolves to
modern-day advertisements and movies, the misconception that wild
wolves are vicious and should be feared is the main reason why wolves
have been hunted to near extinction. This is why The Endangered Wolf
Center exists today—to help save these important species."

She reminds that their work with national recovery programs has
helped two species of wolf from becoming extinct. "Wolves are a vital
part of maintaining a healthy ecosystem. If you do go to see this
movie, please just remember that it is a fictional, completely
inaccurate story and that it does not portray true wolf behavior.
Unfortunately, stories and films like this can majorly set the
conservation movement back."

The film offers an abbreviated history of the relationship between wolves and people—told from the wolf’s perspective—from a time when they coexisted to an era in which people began to fear and exterminate the wolves.

The return of wolves to the northern Rocky Mountains has been called one of America’s greatest conservation stories. But wolves are facing new attacks by members of Congress who are gunning to remove Endangered Species Act protections before the species has recovered.

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Inescapably, the realization was being borne in upon my preconditioned mind that the centuries-old and universally accepted human concept of wolf character was a palpable lie... From this hour onward, I would go open-minded into the lupine world and learn to see and know the wolves, not for what they were supposed to be, but for what they actually were.

-Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf

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“If you look into the eyes of a wild wolf, there is something there more powerful than many humans can accept.” – Suzanne Stone